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Wednesday, November 19, 2008

In 2004 an undefeated Utah got shut out of the National Championship game and went on to beat Pittsburgh in the Mountain West Conference's (MWC) first BCS bowl game. In the era before BCS, Utah may have shared the national championship by virtue of going undefeated. Instead, they got a $4.5 million pat on the back, and Urban Meyer ran to the swamps of Florida.

This year, the Utes are in an even better position, yet still seem to be the poor kid looking in to the party through the window because the doors are all locked. The MWC has taken care of business this year, going 9-5 against BCS foes, with Utah going 2-0. It's also produced 3 high caliber teams (Utah, TCU, BYU) that may all end the season with 10 or more wins and ranked in the top 20 in the nation.

Yet all three of these teams have a loss, and USC's loss came to an Oregon State team that Utah beat the very next week. In a head to head matchup of results it seems clear that Utah should at least be ahead of USC. I mean, look above, the MWC went 6-1 against the Pac-10 this year, so not only did Utah do better against common opponents, but it navigated a stronger conference field than USC did.

So, I posed this question to Stewart Mandel, with Sports Illustrated:

Stewart, what, if anything, needs to happen for Utah to have a shot at the title game? If they go 12-0, they'll have ran the table in a conference that went 9-5 against BCS foes, and beaten the team (Ore. St.) that beat USC. The computers rank them #4 in the BCS standings now, but the pollsters hold them back. If OU beat Texas Tech, then loses in the Big 12 title game, and Alabama stumbles somewhere along the way, and Utah destroys BYU, can Utah get pollster love and make the top 2??

2 comments:

Well, I've thought about it a lot, and unfortunately, I think they've got to at least have BYU play hard for a half and then run away with it in the second half for a convincing victory.

More likely, it will require Utah to KILL BYU because the know-it-all pundits that vote for this thing (who live on the east coast, and have never watched a Mountain West game this year) will need an eye-popping score that they see on the ESPN tagline at the bottom of their TV screens in order to bump Utah up high enough.